Bitcoin News

​Retail giant Overstock, a major online e-commerce platform and distributor, announced that it will begin to accept Ethereum and 40 other altcoins as payment methods through its partnership with ShapeShift.

Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock, revealed in an interview with Fortune that the company will be accepting up to 45 altcoins at any given time. In a statement, he said:

“Overstock is pro-freedom, including the freedom of individuals to communicate information about value and scarcity without relying on a medium created through the fiat of unaccountable government mandarins. For that reason, we have been an early proponent and adopter of cryptocurrencies.”

ShapeShift has become popular amongst large-scale companies and merchants accepting altcoins such as Ethereum and Litecoin apart from bitcoin. Through ShapeShift’s API, companies can easily liquidate altcoins received through their platforms on ShapeShift, to bitcoin.

At this current juncture, it is a sensible decision from Overstock to accept other widely utilized and recognized altcoins in the market apart from bitcoin, as the cryptocurrency market is growing and evolving at a rapid rate. Within the past few months, the market cap of all cryptocurrencies in existence increased from less than $20 billion to $124 billion. Considering that the cryptocurrency market cap increased by more than six times in the past seven months, it is a sensible corporate decision of Overstock to attract more cryptocurrency users to their platform.

According to Byrne, Overstock consumers are already spending around $200,000 per month on the platform to purchase various products. Considering that the market cap of bitcoin only accounts for 50 percent of that of the cryptocurrency market cap, sales of Overstock in cryptocurrencies are expected to rise with the recent partnership with ShapeShift.

More to that, ShapeShift CEOErik Voorhees told Fortune that the company processed more than $200 million worth of orders in July, demonstrating a ten-fold increase in trading volume within a seven month period.

Ethereum and other altcoins based on the Ethereum protocol with their unique and independent ERC 20 tokens that are compatible with Ether, the native token of Ethereum, were not initially developed and structured to operate as currencies. Ethereum’s Ether for instance was developed to serve as transaction fee or “gas” for decentralized applications, which remains as the main reason behind Ether’s inflationary supply.

But, as the adoption of Ethereum and other ERC 20-token based blockchain projects increased, a rising number of investors, traders and users of Ethereum have begun to utilize Ether as a currency and as a store of value. The integration and adoption of Ethereum as a store of value and a settlement system by major retailers and e-commerce platforms such as Overstock will play a vital role in the growth of EThereum in the upcoming years.

Author : Joseph Young

Joseph Young is a finance and tech journalist based in Hong Kong. He has worked with leading media and news agencies in the technology and finance industries, offering exclusive content, interviews, insights and analysis of cryptocurrencies, innovative and futuristic technologies.